I've read the new airport will open soon. I'm due to go home in July. Should I wait until the airport opens before I buy my ticket home, in the hope that there are direct connections with Europe? Or is it safer to bet on a flight over Beijing to Belgium first?
Or: when airports open, do they typically already have agreements with major flight organisations ready so I can fly the very day it opens?
That looks good. You have tried them, I take it? I'll give it a shot this or next week.
I recently heard that Kunming counts over 10,000 Vietnamese nationals. Why oh why isn't there a single Vietnamese restaurant (run by Vietnamese and true to the Vietnamese kitchen) to be found in Kunming?
I'm seriously craving some Pho, Nems, Com Rang and Ca Phe Da. There is a place near Baita Lu on Dongfeng Xiang that does good rice flour wraps but they're not what they were in VN.
Vintage Cafe has real VN coffee but they are not able to serve it iced. There seems to be more to it than just adding ice bits.
I read somewhere the man paid for sex and was subsequently set up. There, another spoke to the rumor mill and another incentive to shut up until you know what exactly happened.
On another note: racism is innate, natural and there is nothing wrong with it as long as you do not disadvantage the other person. In the west we have become obsessed with (being against) racism, this does not seem to be such an issue in China.
Live and let live and do justice to those who deserve it.
Maybe an odd question. I used to be a devout gamer but have since had better things to do and not been in possession of a computer that can handle high-end games. However, recently my old love flared up again and I've been dying to play some of my favourites: Team Fortress 2, Civilisation, Starcraft 2 ...
I have a very portable Thinkpad X200 which is unfortunately not powerful enough to meet today's games' graphics demands.
Now I don't want to spend a couple of thousand on a laptop that can handle those games. It's way too casual to justify such expenses.
Neither do I want to go to internet cafés here because I don't feel at ease when the time and the money are ticking away. Moreover, most of those cafés don't accept foreigners, the games are in chinese, and the settings are not customised to my needs.
I've tried OnLive, a service that streams games over the internet to your PC. It means you can play any game without having special hardware. That worked fine in Belgium over a 20Mbit connection but the 4Mbit connections in China are lacking and the GFW probably puts in its share of the lag too.
Does anyone know of a service like OnLive or any other way to casually play some high-end games?
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First and last experience. Absolutely horrible. I came in late with a big flesh wound. The doctor sewed it up and told me to come back in the morning "perhaps to redo it, and to change the bandage". When I did come back the next morning, they just changed the bandage and sent me off.
When I peeked at my own wound, I noticed it was horribly done. "Like a vet did the stitches," as someone commented. I then had to stay a night in a different hospital in order to do it right, with a 40% chance of getting infections. This cost me a lot more, thanks to Richland fucking up in the beginning.
Whatever X-rays were taken were not printed out and given to me so I couldn't go to another hospital for a second opinion or treatment.
The nurses didn't seem to know where half the things were and the doctors had to repeat orders to get basic things like scissors.
In the next hospital, it was noticed that I had fractured my jaw in two places. On the five X-Rays taken at Richland, they did not notice the fractures.
Pretty sure these people are not actual doctors and are therefore criminal.
Super place. Really cool interior, lots of good beers and drinks, fun toilet inside the telephone booth, and an interesting clientele.
Cons: pretty hard to find, no matching glasses for the imported beers, and home brews need some work.
Teaching and support lamentable.
Four people signed up for the highest-level class and got a teacher who does all the talking, refers to herself as 老师 and makes classes absolutely uninteresting. As of this moment, only 1 person is still going on a regular basis.
While staff is friendly, they are absolutely incapable to help out with visa matters in an adequate way. Lack of information beforehand, lack of support and lack of information during the visa process meant that I am waiting forever for my residence permit to be processed, without any information about why it's taking so long, why they can't get started ... I'd say this school is a good option if all you wanted is a visa, but they can't even handle this properly.
Anyone giving this school a 5-star rating hasn't been to any decently-run schools in Kunming, such as Keats'. The only redeeming quality is facilities and space, those are indeed excellent.
Have been studying at Keats for almost four semesters now and I'm very enthusiastic about the quality of the teachers and the commitment of the school's staff.
One point of criticism is that I think they could put in some effort to group people of the same level together, rather than base it on who was together in last semester's class.
I stayed here in the early days of March 2013. Dave and his wife are swell owners, the staff attentive, the food good, rooms in perfect order, WiFi fast enough... Much like the old hump, the entire place is an excellent place to relax and make friends. And that is what you come to do in Dali, after all. The location is a bit isolated from the old town, but nothing is really far away in Dali. Besides, it makes for a better starting point to walk up Cangshan.
Booming Southeast Asian trade necessitates bilingual graduates
Posted byI'm not as pessimistic as Yuanyangren. I know a fair amount of South-East-Asian students here in Kunming who, besides their own language and pretty good English, also speak Chinese and another South-East-Asian language.
When in Vietnam I heard a fair deal of Chinese, Lao and Cambodian. In eastern Thailand and southern Laos, a fair number of people could speak Vietnamese. People in eastern Burma were often also fluent in Thai as they often (illegally) cross the border to work in Thailand.
There are different reasons for this. First, culturally: except for Chinese, no language or nation is so much bigger than the other that it is not necessary for them to learn their neighbour's language (i.e. you don't have the France or Germany effect). Plus the fact that each country has a lot of immigrants and trade from neighbouring countries.
Linguistically: all of those languages are linguistically closer to each other than each of them is to English (tones, structure over flection, sounds ...), which makes it much easier for the speaker of one SEA language to learn the other. Also, you can pretty much consider Lao and Thai as one language.
Finally, you don't really need to know each language. One will do. Being a linguist myself, I know that knowing a fourth or a fifth language doesn't help. No company ever seeks polyglots. Most would rather employ two persons with different language skills.
That said, I indeed know very few Chinese who master any of those languages. They suffer from the France syndrome where their language is so overwhelmingly big that they do not need to know any others. This could prove a great opportunity for South-East-Asians who do master more than one language, in addition to Chinese.
Getting Away: Luang Prabang
Posted byI think its main attraction is the Europeans exhibit. Isolated and outside their own habitat, they seem a bit unhappy yet continue to do their thing: dining, drinking, complaining about prices, complaining about the heat, complaining about the surroundings, unsuccessfully trying to haggle, taking pictures of everything that moves or -in fact- does not move (the latter probably a result of their isolation), walking around, perusing night marked trinkets and looking for unique experiences.
Best zoo ever.
2012: Three game-changers for Kunming
Posted byWell if it is because of political achievement, then the urge to achieve political achievement has put into place good works. Ergo: whoever holds the strings of these political achievers has found a way to incentivise officials to think what could make a city better before it's actually needed. The goal justifies the means. Okay, it should also be re-evaluated to eliminate quality erosion.
The Pan Asia Gold Exchange, when launched, could have a major impact on the global gold market, other than just reinforcing Kunming and China as financial forces to be reckoned with. See, if as Mr. Maguire suggests, indeed 1000 tonnes of gold will be sold to Chinese people, this will make the price of gold skyrocket. It also means that people who short gold (i.e. they borrow gold from someone who has some, sell it for 100 dollar an ounce, anticipate a price drop and buy it back for 90 dollar an ounce). Net profit: 10 per ounce. These shorts make the market unstable and undermine the position of gold as a money reserve in bad financial times (like, now).
Other things come into play: the increased opening of the RMB to foreign investment (since foreigners will be able to sell gold to Chinese people in return for yuan!) and the fact that there will be a shift in financial power, away from the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) and the COMEX in New York. This would bring balance and free market workings to the bullion market.
There may be many other things that could ensue from the launch of PAGE. It's hard to oversee the changes that may be brought about and the bigger financial and political picture. However, if it launches the way analysts think it will, now may be a good time to buy gold.
Cycling from Kunming to Lüchun
Posted byah blobbles, your blog was a guide for me through that part of the 3201 towards Nansha. I was happy though to find the roadworks all but completely finished.
Cycling from Kunming to Lüchun
Posted byNice post!
I quite liked Nansha though dubbed by my guidebook (which I consequently dumped) "a big uninteresting hamlet with lots of concrete and tiles". I had the best of help there from a local grocer without whom I would've run into considerable trouble. I later lost my phone and therefore contact with him, so I with a few consecutive days to spare, I would like to ride back south (and further down) and say hi - and at the same time spend some days in a place that is a little more wennuan than Kunming these days.
Write-up:
www.crazyguyonabike.com/[...]